


Drink up

by bi_ceratops



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Genre Appropriate Violence, Jet (Avatar) Is An Asshole, M/M, Mystery, Tea, Toph Beifong & Zuko Friendship, Vampire Hunters, Vampires, Zuko (Avatar)-centric, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck, Zuko needs his uncle to function, its more likely than you think, me starting a long fic i wont finish?, youtuber jet
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:33:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27496498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bi_ceratops/pseuds/bi_ceratops
Summary: Iroh had been gone for two months. As far as Zuko was concerned, that was two months too long.The concerned nephew travels to the suburban town of Tickerton in search of his Uncle. It seems normal enough, except from the mysterious funny guy, Sokka, who only appears in the tea shop at night to flirt with Zuko, the blind sassy girl Zuko has to babysit, the conspiracy theory prank youtubers who are terrorising the town and the anaemic corpses that keep cropping up.Zuko finds out tea wasn't the only thing being drank.
Relationships: Sokka/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 79





	1. Welcome to Tickerton, hope you survive the experience

Iroh had been gone for two months. As far as Zuko was concerned, that was two months too long.

He’d set off on a business trip in early March. This in itself was not unusual: as the owner of a chain of successful independent tea shops Iroh travelled to the far reaches of the country in order to personally visit each and every shop and make deals with all the companies that provided all the stock. The business owner was supposed to be away for two weeks, which was pretty typical. Then he didn’t come back for another fortnight. This too was not unusual: the jolly old man often disappeared off on wacky hijinks with his old man friends and was not very good at sending texts or making calls, even though Zuko had spent many a night trying to show him. “Nephew, a handwritten letter contains double the information and ten times the heart.” Iroh chuckled, gently pushing the laptop out of his lap.

“Yes, and it’s thirty times slower.” Zuko had spat back, pointing out the attachment icon on the email app. That being said, Zuko waited two weeks for his uncle’s letter to turn up. When that two weeks turned into four, Zuko began to become slightly concerned. He sent several texts, emails, letters even. Nothing from Iroh. Four weeks turned into five and Zuko reached out to one of their family friends, Piandao. 

Not only was Piandao a family friend that Zuko had known since he was a child he was also one of his Uncle’s younger friends, and answered Zuko’s text within five minutes. As far as Piandao knew Iroh was still in the tiny town where he’d gone to set up his tea shop. He’d sent Zuko the address, and an ominous message saying ‘I wouldn’t recommend going.’

5 weeks had turned into six, and on a bright May morning Zuko pulled up to the little town of Tickerton. The drive up had been frustrating. Tickerton was at the top of a massive hill that loomed up over the forests that spanned the landscape like a velvet green ocean. The town itself was picturesque and mainly free of travellers and tourists, which was half good because there was not a backlog of cars on the main road into Tickerton. The drawback was that there were children and families everywhere, running around and playing on the streets. The amount of times Zuko had nearly ran over a child gleefully running into the road was a lot higher than it should have been. Maybe it had been a mistake travelling up on a Sunday. 

The whole town gave off the vibe of a model village: the cheering kids, the warm yellow sun and crisp blue skies. The Jasmine Dragon seemed to be the only exception. The lights were off, the curtains were drawn, and there was a pile of newspaper chucked on the front door step. When Zuko had finally found his parking space and trundeled over to the front door of the shop he found that the front door was locked, the backside of the handle caked in a thick, dry layer of dust. Swearing, Zuko checked under all of the brightly painted (and quite dusty) pots in the shop. It would have looked lovely and serene, like something out of a children’s drawing had the shop not been apparently abandoned. All of the flowers in them were dead, and after lots of digging Zuko finally found the key to the shop’s front door. Iroh had a habit of leaving keys in a specific place in all of his shops, saying that his nephew could then always use the shops as a halfway house if he was in trouble. 

For once Zuko was thankful for this, and he pushed into the tea shop. The door was battered a little bit by a pile of letters shoved up against the door having collected there. This was unsettling, Iroh rarely ever ignored a letter. Zuko even saw a few of his own letters dropped on the floor, his curly neat handwriting decorating the front. The rest of the tea shop wasn’t much more lived in: all of the equipment had been put back tidily in its proper place but looked like it hadn’t been touched for weeks, and the fridge which contained all of the milk was beginning to stink, sour and sharp. “Uncle!” Zuko called out. “Uncle?! Are you here? Unc-”

The irritating bell that Iroh put up in all of his tea shops dingled. A woman stood at the door, tall and proud, surveying the shop with her nose scrunched up in disgust. A younger girl was hidden behind her, who would look almost the spitting image of the woman were she not a little stocky and short instead of slender, and instead of having sparkling lime green eyes they were large and milky white. Suddenly the stick the shorter one was carrying made sense. The blind teenager didn’t look like she wanted to be at the shop at all, and huffed when her mother started speaking. “Excuse me, are you the owner of this establishment?”

“My uncle is-” 

“Great. Well, tell him that my daughter was supposed to start her shift here a month and a half ago and hasn’t been able to get in because it’s all locked up! How else is she supposed to get work experience before she goes off to college?!”

“I told you mom, I don’t need my first job to be at home-” The daughter begged, but was only met with a tut.

“Toph!” The mother raised her voice into a harsh, sharp tone. “You are not having your first job be in a place I can’t supervise you! You’re lucky your father and I are even letting you go.”

“... It was your idea.”

Zuko coughed awkwardly, feeling like he was witnessing some sort of private movement he didn’t have enough emotional stability of his own to deal with. “My Uncle is away, actually. I haven’t heard from him in a while.” It was a bit of a lie but Zuko wasn’t going to explain that his uncle had just disappeared. 

“Well it’s a good thing that you’re here then. You can supervise my daughter.”

“I, uh-”

“I’ll see you at 4:30 then, sweetie.” The mother cooed, pressing a kiss to her daughter’s frowny face. The daughter pulled a sour expression, waiting for her mother to leave the tea shop before throwing her stick halfway across the room and expertly walked over to one of the plush sofas and sat herself down, arms outstretched in relaxation. She let out a long, chilled sigh, and tilted her head in Zuko’s general direction.

“I’m Toph.”

“Zuko.” 

“So are you going to put me to work or not?”

Zuko dropped his head into his hands and sighed. Babysitting some blind teenager had not been how he wanted this day to go. He yanked open the fridge, wincing as the rotten milk smell shot out of the coolness. “Uh, not really. We’re not opening for a while today, if at all actually. If you want you can help clean but on the other hand you can just sit there. I don’t mind.”

“I’ll sit here.” Toph shrugged. 

Zuko held as many milk curtains as he could in his arms and trudged open to the back door, kicking it open with his foot and dropping the milk into the large industrial bin. He moved back through the shop and opened a cupboard, pulling out two cups. “Do you drink tea?”

“Yeah. I like the Jasmine.” 

“Good choice. That’s uncle’s favourite.” Zuko nodded, putting the kettle onto the boil. “Speaking of my uncle, have you seen him?”

“No.” Toph said, waving her hand in front of her face. Zuko’s face erupted into heat.

“I’m so sorry- it was a figure of speech-” Zuko flummoxed. Toph laughed heartily in response.

“I’m just messing with you dude. He arrived like two months ago, worked here for about a fortnight and then pissed off with no warning. We had no idea where he went but he left no one in charge, didn’t give anyone a key. Everyone else thought that they were fired and stopped turning up. Apart from my mom. She works across the street and wasn’t going to let me get away.” 

“I know a thing or two about pushy parents. Don’t worry about it.” Zuko finished making the mug of tea and sat across from Toph, placing the cup in front of her. She took a long, loud slurp and burped. 

“So what are you doing here anyway? Don’t take this the wrong way but you don’t seem the type to move to a pretty little town like Tickerton.”

“What do you mean, type?”  
“Everyone here’s got some sort of stick up their ass. The adults are all prissy and stuck up, all the little kids are brats, and most of the young adults feel like they’re hiding something.”

Zuko raised an eyebrow. “And you’re not?”

“I mean I hide that I’m super capable from my parents but other than that not much.” 

Zuko snorted. “Fair enough. No, I’m just looking for my uncle. He was meant to head back to the city about a month ago but never did.”

“I’m sure he’s alright. Even though the vibes are monumentally off in this place nothing bad has actually ever happened.”

Zuko stood up, grabbing his empty tea mug and stalking over to the sink. He looked at the discarded letters by the sink and the dusty equipment, as well as a few used cups that had been left to dry by the sink. “That’s what everybody says until something bad does.”

Toph laughed. “Okay, edgelord.”

\---

Toph had been promptly collected at 4:30 just as expected, with the promise that she would be back the next day to help in the shop (avoid sitting in her mother’s dull accounting job) and to help Zuko decipher the mystery of where his uncle had gone. He wasn’t sure if the situation constituted the term ‘mystery’ just yet but he was becoming less and less convinced of this the more he roamed the store. The cash register was hanging half open, the dishwasher was full, and the bin was full. Zuko hadn’t really had a chance to explore the shop though because pretty much the second Toph’s mother had come to pick her up a gaggle of middle aged women had followed her into the Jasmine Dragon expecting tea. Zuko had had to open the shop at this point and had been serving tea to a selection of people exclusively by himself for hours. By the end of it his neck creaked and his head buzzed, the combined stress of driving hours, watching a sassy blind teenager and then having to deal with a selection of grumpy privileged townspeople leaving him drained and angry. 

Darkness had fallen, the streetlights washing the land outside of the shop with artificial yellow lights which made all the people who walked under them look plaid and sickly. Zuko was trying to deal with the backlog of washing and was about to close up when he heard the irritating bell ring shrilly for what he hoped was the last time that night. He had half a mind to tell the customer to fuck off and let him clean in peace but he remebered Iroh’s words about manners and put on his best fake smile.

Someone was standing at the door, holding it slightly ajar but not crossing the entrance. “Hey man, can I come in?”

Zuko froze. The man was gorgeous. Thick brown hair that was pulled back into a ponytail, dark skin and a charismatic smile that Zuko’s were drawn to straight away. He was wearing a navy blue shirt that reached down to the middle of his forearms and was likely a little too small, although Zuko definitely wasn’t complaining. He dragged his eyes away from trying to not check out the strange and stuttered. “Uh, yeah, sure. Yeah… Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He said, grinning. “Just wasn’t sure that you were open because I didn’t see anyone here.” He glanced briefly around the room and Zuko tried desperately to calm his blush and not notice how vibrantly blue the stranger’s eyes were. “Nice place you’ve got here. Is it yours?”

“My Uncle’s.” Zuko admitted. “He owns a couple of these across the country, designed them all himself.”

“Awesome. I wish I could decorate as well as this. My sister says I have the artistic capability of a five year old, which isn’t exactly false but I kind of wish I was better at it.”

“I paint, sometimes.” Zuko blurted, eyes widening. “Usually, er, ducks. Don’t ask why.”

“... Okay.” The guy laughed, shaking his head slightly. “What do you have that has the most caffeine in it?”

“We have coffee. Some good natural teas for staying awake. Or I could boil some energy drink.”

A sudden look passed through the stranger’s eyes and he perked up. It was the sort of energy that would be associated with either a little child or an old eccentric mad scientist and for a worrying second Zuko thought that for a second he’d actually have to make good on his promise and boil up some monster. He then shrunk down again. 

“Actually I think I’ll go with the coffee. As much caffeine as possible please, and like 5 sugars.”

“5 sugars?” The stranger’s request was like a slap in the face. He was watching Zuko’s brain stop functioning with a sly smile on his polished white teeth, each one perfectly shaped and bright. His right canine hung over his lip and Zuko nearly fainted at how hot the suggestive lip bite was. Instead he just fired out a barrage of words without thinking like usual. “How are your teeth so perfect?”

“I have a good dentist.” 

Zuko shook his head absentmindedly and turned away to work the coffee machine. He was tiredly pushing buttons on the machine when the stranger’s voice came from over his shoulder. “My name’s Sokka, by the way. It’s nice to meet you.”

“I’m Zuko.” 

The two made idle chat whilst the coffee machine was working. Apparently Sokka needed his caffeinated sugar monstrosity for some sort of hunt he was going on (a lost dog from what Sokka said, but he himself hadn’t seemed all that sure). He had just graduated from the local university, the same year as Zuko, and was living with his sister and starting an engineering business until graduated. Zuko hung onto every word, nodding along and trying not to stare. The coffee machine was finally done with a loud clunk and Zuko served him, passing along the large drink with the price of a medium. “Thanks man.” Sokka said, tipping Zuko more than he should’ve done. Way more than he should have done.

“You’re welcome, but this is a massive tip. I don’t think I can accept this.”

“Really?” Sokka asked. “I never know what to tip anymore. Interest rates and inflation are so confusing nowadays. I remember when cups of coffee were like 6 yuans.”

Zuko wasn’t sure he remembered a day when anything was as cheap as 6 yuans.

“...Sure.”

Sokka didn’t stop to collect the money anyway. “I’ll see you round, Zuko?”

“Sounds great.” Zuko called out into the street after him, closing the door and locking it. He began to close the blinds but paused before he could, peeking through the window after Sokka. He’d disappeared into the shadows and couldn’t be seen. The surrogate tea shop owner closed the blinds fully, grabbed one of the nylony blankets from one of the plush sofas, switched off the lights and collapsed onto said sofa, still in his day clothes. He could find out where uncle had been sleeping tomorrow, but for now he just needed to rest, his energy having ebbed away like a receding ocean.

Zuko’s head hit the pillow. 

He slept like a dead man.


	2. Puppets and true crime and pictures, oh my!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko does some investigating and meets some of the colourful citizens of Tickerton including a bratty children's entertainment, his bear, and a true crime youtuber with an attitude.

As per usual, Zuko rose with the sun. He woke up at around half four, long hair spiking out randomly and his neck cracking from how he’d been pushed up against the seat. He stumbled round for a few seconds of delirious tiredness but soon stiffened up, heading straight to the coffee machine and making himself a large, steaming mug of heat. It definitely wasn’t a graceful way to wake up: Zuko had found himself in worse situations, but he smelt of sweat and tinned coffee and his uncle’s artisan teas and his teeth felt like they had a layer of grime coating them. He swore, unlocking the back door of the store and made the tiring hike up a small hill to where the car park was situated. He managed to cram as many bags as possible into his arms and locked the car, taking a final cursory glance at the sunrise before he trudged back down the hill. 

The sky looked like it was on fire, reds, yellows and pinks strewn across the blue and white, warm and washed yet still sublime and awe inspiring. The sun’s first rays shone on Zuko and he just stood and … breathed. In and out. Just like Uncle had taught him. Zuko had spent so many nights as a child cowering in the dark from his father that the sun brought solace and memories of his mother’s delicate laugh, rejuvenating him and invigorating a sense of life. Uncle had always said that ‘when the sun rises we’re honest and we’re safe’.

He hoped for the old man’s sake that that was true.

Zuko headed back to the Jasmine Dragon, breaking from the blissful second of peace. He managed to only drop a few of his bags on the way and instantly rushed to the back room. There was a selection of toilets in the Jasmine Dragon but the staff one was the one Zuko was looking for: it was clean and mostly unused, which was good, with a little porcelain toilet and sink. It also had a little shower, which Zuko was especially thankful for. It wasn’t the most expensive or reliable shower Zuko had ever been in but it was nice to wash off all the car grime and woke him up reliably. Zuko quickly changed into a fresh but crumpled change of clothes and set off to explore the rest of the back half of the shop.

The most infuriating thing was that the tea shop was, for the most part, completely normal. There was the toilet, of course, a store cupboard stacked full of teas and paper towels, and a break room with a small table, cheap boxy television and a lumpy futon that looked like it would be Zuko’s bed until Iroh turned up. However what Zuko was really interested in was the office. As usual it was full of okay looking IKEA furnishings (the expensive stuff used in the main shop), including a flimsy desk made out of a light coloured wood and a spinny chair plumped up by an over fluffy faux fur pillow. It was evident that Iroh had been the last one to use the desk: there was a cold cup of tea in a dusty cup which had the beginnings of bacteria growing in it (the cup was promptly thrown in the bin) and the photo which Uncle took with him everywhere was still stood in prime position.

The picture was framed with lovely red wood which Zuko had doodled on one rainy afternoon, little ducks circling the photo. It was of Zuko and his Uncle at a fairground, about a year after the ‘accident’. Zuko was pulled into Iroh’s side, swamped under a giant plush lion that Iroh had caught Zuko eyeing all night and had promptly one for him, defeating the coconut shy with deadly aim. Little Zuko eyes gleamed with the flash of the old camera, the joyful tears leaking out of his eyes as he laughed. He couldn’t remember what had set him off but he remembered it was the first time he’d properly laughed, thrown his head back and let it rip out of him, in years, even when he had two working eyes. Zuko slowly picked up the memory and inspected it, eyes lingering in Iroh’s face. It was red from whatever he’d been chuckling at, but instead of looking into the camera he was gazing at his nephew with a fond, thoughtful look. Zuko missed that look more than anything.

“Where are you?” 

Zuko flicked down one of the metal things that kept the back attached to the frame and put the photo back down, sighing. He did a quick check of some of the other papers on the desk but they were normal, just standardised bills and official documents about tea and the shop. The next most interesting thing was the safe wedged under the desk like a little metal cabinet. Zuko crouched down and fiddled with the old fashioned dial that you had to spin, but in all honesty he had no idea what the passcode was. Likely 6 digits, hopefully something he could easily guess. He tried Uncle’s birthday. Nothing. He tried his own birthday. Nothing. He tried 1111. Obviously nothing. Zuko was fully considering just giving up and bashing the safe in with a hammer or a really strong saw, looking up at the photo on the desk. Little Zuko grinned back at him. It struck him.

Zuko dove back down to the safe and began to twist the dial, the safe unlocking with a soft click. The code had been the date Iroh had formally adopted Zuko, a day they had both decided was one of the best of their lives. From a first glance it looked much the same as the desk, a bunch of paperwork and a strange stagnant smell that he couldn’t quite place. Scowling, Zuko prepared to grab a pile of dusty paperwork and read, when-

“ZU-KO?! WHERE ARE YOU?” Toph was yelling out from the front half of the shop in a singsong voice. He scrambled out from under the desk (nearly hitting his head on the way) and hurried into the main shop, where Toph had already thrown on an apron and was tending to the coffee machine that Zuko had used for Sokka last night and completely forgotten about. Zuko was glad Toph couldn’t see him blush as he thought about the night before - not that anything had happened, it had just been the most comfortable and friendly interaction he’d had in a long time, especially in this damned town. It didn’t hurt that he was quite hot. 

“Toph, what are you doing here?” 

“Working.” She said nonchalantly, shrugging. 

“I checked the schedule yesterday. You don’t have a shift until tomorrow afternoon.”

“Well no one else is here and I could do with their wages. Also, it means I can escape from my mom for a few hours so that’s great.” Zuko could empathise with that. “And I want to find your crazy uncle. This is the most interesting shit that’s happened in town… ever. Well, that and the other disappearances-”

“Other disappearances?!” Zuko snapped. “Other people have disappeared and you know my Uncle’s missing and you didn’t say anything?!” 

Toph groaned. “Yeah, but all the people who disappeared are just some of the weirdos who probably ran away. Never see them around in the day.” Her mouth hung open and she gasped. Her tone was half mocking, half actually surprised. “Maybe they’re vampires!” 

Zuko rolled his eyes and threw on his own apron. “Stay as long as you want, Toph.” He went to tuen the open sign on the front of the shop but paused at the last second. “And thanks, Toph. I appreciate the help.”

Toph blushed, folding her arms. “Yeah, whatever.”

\---

“Erm, excuse me? I have a complaint about my tea.” A whiny, little voice cropped up behind Zuko. It was that tone he would recognise anywhere. It was the same on any woman or man, whether they had a dumb blonde haircut that looked like straw or an ugly neon vest top. It was the tone of someone that was going to ruin Zuko’s entire day, or, more likely, his entire week.

He turned round with his best fake customer service smile, all venom and forced happiness. He was faced directly with a bear, staring him directly in the eyes. Zuko’s smile dropped and he stepped backwards, raising his eyebrows in shock. The bear was large and velvety with glassy orange eyes and a fabric crown resting on its head, mouth open to show rows of ice white felt teeth. Shame settled over Zuko’s skin in a wave of heat. The bear was a puppet. The man operating was thin faced and scowling, some tiny glasses perched on the bridge of his skinny nosed. He was dressed in a garish green suit that would either belong to a hipster or a clown, and he too had a fabric crown on his head. “Uh, sorry.” Said Zuko, trying to hide the uncertainty in his voice that bled through unconvincingly. “What’s wrong?”

“My tea is cold. I spent half an hour brushing out Bosco’s fur and it went cold.” 

“That’s what happens when you leave tea for half an hour.” Zuko snapped. Uncle would kill him for being so snippy to a customer. Uncle wasn’t here right now. "And who is Bosco?"

“I want a refund." Kuei growled. "And he's my bear puppet."

“Right. Well it’s your fault the tea went cold. You can’t have a refund.”

“What?!” The man raged, pushing his mouse sized glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I want to speak to your manager.”

Toph appeared behind the man with a wide grin on her face. She took too much satisfaction in saying “He is the manager.” The man floundered, turning a bright red. “Well I demand a refund! I’m a valuable member of this community and I deserve my wishes to be treated with respect.”

“You put on mediocre puppet shows for children.” Toph snorted, shaking her head. “You’re not actually a king, Kuei. Get over yourself.” 

Kuei seethed, shifting on his feet and causing the bear puppet (why was it life size?!) to wobble menacingly. Zuko chuckled under his breath at the angry little man and his large puppet. He turned to Zuko and pointed a figure at him that shook with outrage. “She can’t talk to me like that! Fire her! Tell her off!”

Zuko turned to Toph, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Bad Toph. Don’t be mean to the customer.” He wagged his finger at her mockingly. Yes, he was aware it was terrible service but that was the least of his worries at the moment. “If you do that again you’ll be in big trouble.”

“Big trouble?!” Toph marvelled. “Oh no! That would be terrible!”

Kuei scowled and fled the shop, dragging his overly sized bear puppet behind him. It caught on the door frame and he tripped forward, spilling out into the road. He scrambled up and yanked the bear out of the door. All of the patrons of the shop had turned to look at him at this point. One person, a young man dressed like a 17 year old with spiky brown hair and sharp eyebrows who had been sat with a bunch of rowdy boys, was even filming the event and cheering Kuei mockingly as he left. Yes the treatment of Kuei had been somewhat humiliating and maybe Zuko was a little bit of a bad person for enjoying it, but he wasn’t really sure that filming the ordeal was an okay boundary to cross. “YOU’LL REGRET THIS!” Kuei yelled. “I’M LEAVING YOU A TERRIBLE YELP REVIEW!”

“Holy shit!” Toph laughed, doubling over. “Could you hear him losing it?!”

“I think the whole town could.” Zuko sighed, trying to tug down the smirk on his lips. 

“That’s the funniest- that’s the funniest shit I’ve heard in weeks!” Toph snorted through bouts of giggles, shaking her head. “i’M lEaViNg YoU a TeRrIBlE yElP rEvIeW!!!”

The man with the camera had now turned the attention on to Toph, watching her as she got possessed by what could only be described as ‘side splitting laughter’.   
“Hey!” Zuko called out. “Stop filming!”

“Sorry dude.” The guy said, standing up from his chair and striding over to where Zuko and Toph were, not lowering his camera. He had a smug swagger as he moved and a smirk that read like the Cheshire cat. A sprig of corn hung out the side of his mouth. The group of other people he was with yelled happily as he walked over, one a big guy, another a girl with a long fringe, the third a long faced boy with pale skin, and a short boy with a long bucket hat which dropped down in front of his eyes. “So, did you know that guy? Who was he?”

“Waaiitt.” Said Toph, giggles apparently over and her mouth gaping wide open. “Are you… Are you Jet from the Freedom Fighters?!” 

“The one and only.” Jet shrugged. 

“Oh my god!” She squealed. “I love your channel!”

Zuko raised his eyebrow. “What is going on?”

“Jet runs the craziest true crime channel on Youtube! He actually goes to where the crimes are committed and he does dumb shit and investigates! Absolutely hilarious and I can’t even see what’s happening!” Toph giggled. 

“Right.” Zuko said. “So what are you doing here.”

“I’m investigating the disappearances. Gonna be lit. Anyway, so who was that guy?” 

“Gonna be what?” Zuko whispered. 

Toph launched into an answer, ignoring Zuko’s confusion. “He was King Kuei. Kids birthday entertainer, been doing it round Tickerton for like 12 years. He did my 8th birthday party. A bit shit, considering he kept on trying to make me, a blind girl, laugh with his dumb bear puppet but all I could hear was an annoying little voice going ‘Bosco’s gonna get ya!’” She quieted a little. “It was kind of scary, actually.” 

“Oh damn.” Jet said. “Seems like he makes a lot of enemies with that holier than thou ‘refund my drink’ attitude.”

“Most adults quite like him, actually. Nearly every kid has had a birthday party hosted by him, so there’s a mixture of respect and nostalgia.” Toph rolled her eyes. “I don’t think he has the balls to be part of the disappearances.”

“Huh.” Jet said. He spun the camera and shoved it a little too close into Zuko’s eyes. Zuko flinched, stepping back and batting the camera away. “What about you? What’s your opinion on him?”

Zuko folded his arms, scowling. “I literally got here yesterday. I really don’t care about the annoying hipster.”

“So you think he’s annoying?” Jet dug, raising his thin, spindly eyebrows accusingly.

“Well I also said he was a hipster.” 

Jet cackled at this, shaking his head and patting his knees. “You’re a funny dude.” He took a cup off the side and pulled a permanent marker out of nowhere, signing the cup and pressing into Toph’s hand. “Well, it’s always nice to meet a fan.”

“You do realise she’s blind, right? She can’t see the signature.” 

Jet shot his lackeys that look that said ‘edit that out later’. “You two have been very ~helpful~. I’ll definitely be back here at some point: great tea and even better company.” He winked at Zuko. “See you round, tall, dark and handsome.” Zuko’s face began to burn so he furrowed his eyebrows and tried to fold his arms even further in. Jet and his whirled out of the tea shop, a barrage of eyes following the humdrum. Toph was grinning again.

“I can’t believe Jet from the freedom fighters flirted with you!”

“Neither can I.” Zuko huffed. “Seems like a real upstanding member of society.”

From outside the shop window Jet was staring intently at Zuko as his mates loaded themselves into a flashy silver van that looked more expensive than everything Zuko owned. His gaze was withering and strong, making Zuko feel naked and uncomfortable. Like a meal.

He shivered.


	3. The diary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko bonds with Sokka (which is great), discovers some clues to his uncle's location (which is slightly worrying), and has another run in with Jet (which is absolutely abhorrent).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for gore/ descriptions of a corpse? The description itself is relatively brief and it's not super graphic or bloody but I felt like I should mention it?

Zuko had spent a week in Tickerton, and had unfortunately not uncovered anything. All his time had been spent hanging out in the Tea Shop: when he wasn’t serving snotty customers he was trying to sort out the finances to save a tea shop that had been abandoned for two and a bit months, or was trying to entertain Toph, who was determined to be both a help and a hindrance at any possible moment. One particular instance he’d got her chatting about Jet and the Freedom Fighters, who thankfully had not been back to cause havoc. “They’re hilarious, unlike most people. Last season they tracked down this wanted criminal to this tiny little town and fucked him up. Like- properly fucked him up. Called the police, exposed them in front of a boy scout group, yanked down his pants when they were arresting him. Couldn’t even see it and it was the funniest thing I’ve ever heard!”

“Great.” Zuko had muttered. He’d been hearing this for what felt like days. “Don’t you think they take things too far?”

“At least they do something. Nothing annoys me more than people who just run away. Like Suki and Katara? When the bossman disappeared they just stopped turning up.”

“Aren’t you only here because your mother forced you?” 

Toph shrugged. “I would've been here anyway. When I promise, I promise.” 

Zuko nodded, continuing to dry a mug. He stopped. “Wait. Who are Suki and Katara?”

“Assistant managers. Night shift, I think. Probably the last people to see your Uncle. Huh.”

Zuko groaned and put down the mug. Here was the helpful, hidden under layers of hindrance. “Have you seen them?”

“Haven’t seen Suki around if I’m honest. She's one of the weirdos who ran off. I liked her though, she was cool and funny and-” Toph blushed for a second before turning back to the dishwasher she was stacking. “I think I heard Katara’s brother chatting on the phone to her, so she’s around. Part of the same group. We never really got along.”

“Thanks Toph.” 

Sokka had been Zuko’s saving grace from the confusing humdrum that was managing the Jasmine Dragon. He had popped into the shop once and got served by Toph, ducking in and out with barely a passing word to Zuko. He had shot him a wink over the counter, though. Then a few days later Zuko was cleaning up the coffee machine, again, when Sokka strolled in. “Zuko, dude! Long time no see.” 

Zuko snorted. “Yeah, it’s been a long 48 hours. What’s your order?” 

Sokka ummed and ahhed before settling on a sugary, caffeinated monstrosity of a drink, piled high with cream and frothiness. He took it and sat on one of the corner booths, taking a long, childish slurp and made direct eye contact with the barista. Zuko glanced around the store before following Sokka to the booth, a mug of calming herbal tea in his grip versus whatever the hell Sokka had. Zuko wasn’t sure, and he had made it. “So, draw any more ducks?”

Zuko smiled into his tea. “No, I’ve been busy. Apparently lots of people like tea?”

Sokka grinned, a move that was quickly becoming a heart fluttering classic. “What’s not to like? Good drinks and even better company.”

If Zuko had any initiative around hot men he would wink and flirt back at Sokka. Instead he short circuited, everything stopped and he blurted, “Funnily enough that’s what the Youtube douchebag said.”  
“YouTube douchebag?” Sokka questioned. “Seems like a flirt. Do I need to beat him up?”

Yet again Zuko blushed. He wouldn't be surprised if Sokka thought he had some sort of illness that caused him to burn bright red every time someone either complimented him or he faced a minor inconvenience. “Jet, from the, uh, Freedom Fighters?”

“Oh, I know them.” Sokka nodded, rolling his eyes. “My sister used to be OBSESSED. Especially with Jet. She stopped liking him for whatever reason but she’s going to lose it, one way or another if he’s in town. What’s he looking at?”

“The disappearances.”

The jokey expression fell on Sokka’s face for a split second, replaced by a bolt of seriousness that was soon wiped off. However when he spoke again his voice did wobble with uncertainty. “Well I don’t think those disappearances are that big a deal. I mean no one’s dead, right? The most dodgy thing is the group of weirdos it’s managed to attract.”

“Hey, I’m one of those weirdos.” 

Sokka paused mid slurp. “Oh my God I had no idea, sorry-”

“Don’t worry about it. I didn’t know about all the disappearances when I arrived - my Uncle, he owns this place, well he went MIA. It’s not super unusual for him to vanish for like, a few weeks, but that was two months ago and I got worried, so I came here. Then I sort of got pushed into manning his tea shop and looking after Toph.”

Sokka reached out and squeezed Zuko’s hand. His skin was silk soft and cold. “Sorry about your Uncle. I’m sure you’ll find him. I haven’t had either of my parents in my life in my life for ... a while, and I remember how scary it was without them. I’m not insinuating you need him to function, obviously, I know how that sounds-” Sokka was beginning to ramble, spinning the straw through his drink so the cream swirled on top of it like an iceberg. 

“It’s okay. I get what you mean. It’s nice to have someone who you can at least pretend is more responsible.”

Sokka released a long exhale and slumped back in his chair. “Truer words have never been spoken. For a while I was the only one looking after my little sister and her boyfriend. You’d be surprised how slowly twenty years can pass when you’re in charge of a stroppy sister and an eco terrorist.” 

“Twenty years?” Zuko questioned like ‘eco terrorist’ was not the oddest thing Sokka had said. 

“Oh? Did I say twenty? It felt like twenty. It was uh, three. Yeah! And he wasn’t actually an eco terrorist- he was just a vegan who might have destroyed a big factory. Accidentally. You know, kids.”

Zuko nodded. Examining his childhood experiences (abusive father, scheming sister, absentee mother, knife wielding best friend, flaming anger issues) Zuko would not put it past any of the children he knew to destroy a factory, especially if that child had been him and that factory had been one of his dad’s. “Yeah, kids.”

Zuko was suddenly aware that Zuko’s hand was still encased in Sokka’s tanned fingers and suddenly he was back to being booboo the blushing fool, the blood rushing to his cheek as his finger tensed up. Sokka dropped the hold and chugged the remainder of his drink, avoiding Zuko’s eye contact and staring up at the ceiling as he drank. When he pulled the cap away he had a cream moustache painting his upper lip and a shot of strawberry syrup dripping down from the corner of his mouth, bright red. He looked like a cross between Santa and Dracula and Zuko lost it, almost spitting out his tea and doubling over in laughter. “Uh, dude, what’s so funny?”

“Your- aha-” Zuko pointed to Sokka’s top lip before shaking his head and breaking down in immature giggles. Sokka brought a hand to his top lip and flicked off a blob of cream. His eyes widened, he let out a tired exhale, which then dissolved into an assault of giggles that rivalled Zuko’s. Whilst Zuko lit up when he laughed, throwing his whole body into the unusual act, Sokka laughed like laughing was the most natural thing he’d ever done, even a part of him. It looked good on him. Zuko wanted him to do it all the time. 

Sokka’s phone beeped obnoxiously. “Shit.” He sighed. The air was suddenly drab and cold again. “My sister. I love her but damn - she has the worst timing.” He pushed his chair away from the table and stood up. “I’ll see you round?”

Zuko smiled. “You better.”

\---

Uncle Iroh was one of those people that always did his paperwork. He definitely did not enjoy it and would procrastinate by playing a surplus amount of Pai Sho, but it always got done and somehow it always got done to quite a high standard. As he was sifting through the paperwork in the safe, Zuko had never been happier about that. He found filling out forms mind numbingly boring, but at least Iroh had filled them out in a way that was actually readable. He was currently sitting under the desk with a lamp which was still plugged in at the wall, using the warm orange light to sift through the various paperwork. 

It was mostly the dull yet important things that Zuko had expected: some tax reports, various certificates of health, insurance paperwork, and most touching of the official documents: Zuko’s adoption papers. There were some other things that Iroh had deemed important - a few of Lu Ten’s old things (a drawing of him, his father and his cousins, some school reports, some photos, and a macaroni portrait of a horse), some letters between Iroh and Zuko and Iroh and his wife, and a leather-bound notebook. Inside it was lined with dates and scruffy handwriting, the complete opposite to the posh calligraphy that he used on official documents. It was a diary.

As with reading anything that was someone’s personal property, leafing through Iroh’s diary was alien. Zuko’s uncle had always been this infallible adult figure in his life, a cornucopia of wisdom and bad jokes. It felt wrong to be reading his inner thoughts, so Zuko just flicked to the last entry. It came about a month into Iroh’s disappearance and was written in a messier, hastier script than the rest of the book. It was also unusually short: Zuko was sure that his Uncle liked to muse and philosophise in his writing just as much as he did in real life and the long paragraphs definitely showed that. The very last entry was only a few sentences. 

“Dear Diary.  
As it stands, my trip is going much worse than expected. The remains of the native clutch are desperate and scared. We’ve come to a bit of a compromise: Aang and Suki and I will investigate tonight and the other two will stay here no matter what happens.   
I am also slightly concerned for Zuko. I received a concerned letter from him today. I can’t reply because it will put him in danger, but I pray that he won’t come looking for me. If he does, well, I hope has enough of a lack of common sense to not call the police, because that’s likely to get us all dead. Yes. That is serious. And I am also hoping that he WILL NOT, by ANY circumstances, FIND THE CUPBOARD. In real life I would be winking at the last sentence.  
I love you, Nephew. Please don’t be in Tickerton.  
Iroh.”

Zuko’s throat suddenly seized up. This was bad. This was very bad. His palms were sweaty and he dropped the diary. It clattered on the floor. That feeling of dread that teenage Zuko had tried so hard to purge was back in full force, weighing him down. Danger? Don’t call the police? Why hadn’t he called the police? What the fuck was ‘the cupboard’? Who was Aang? Did he work at the shop like Suki? What was the clutch? What was so wrong with Tickerton?

His head was swimming like he was high. Just half an hour ago Zuko would be flirting with some guy from the tea shop. He’d spent the last week serving snotty customers and babysitting a grumpy teenager. It’s not like Zuko was not getting on with Toph and Sokka but what the fuck was he doing? He thought that Uncle was away mucking around, on one of his wacky adventures. Not in life or death danger. Holy shit. Zuko was going to lose it.

As it turns out, there is nothing more sobering than a high pitched scream in the middle of the night. 

The worries were gone and Zuko sprang to his feet, charging through the shop to find out where the noise had come from. Call it the heightened worry from his panic from the diary or the innately human response to a screech in the night, a screech he had once made, but he was suddenly up and looking to help. He barrelled out of the front door into the street. It was washed out by the ugly, weak lights that illuminated a woman, likely the screamer, hunched over two things on the floor. 

It stank. It stank like copper and sweat. It hit him like a brick as he jogged up the centre of the road.

The thing closest to Zuko was left by itself. It was something fluffy, turned downwards so the face couldn’t be seen. The fur on the back was clumped and mangled, wet from where it looked like it had rolled across the floor. Zuko crept over and, grimacing, rolled it over. A pair of glassy eyes glared at him in the darkness, above a thick brown snout and below a felt crown. It was the fucking puppet bear.

And if the bear was there, then the owner…

Zuko stepped forwards to get a better look at the people. A pair of small hipster glasses crunched under his foot.

The woman was crouched over King Kuei. He was pale and sallow, skin sunk and ghostly, almost translucent. Zuko had never seen anything like it. Kuei had been skinny but now it was like he had been deflated, his skin sticking to the small muscles and bones. He was splayed out face down, his hand outstretched towards the tea shop that lay at the end of the street. Maybe he wanted help. Zuko shook that thought out of his head and walked up to where the woman was. “What’s happened?!”

Someone was charging down the street, camera in hand. It was Jet.

“He… I was just walking home from my boyfriend’s and I saw him.” The woman sobbed, Kuei’s hand gripped in hers. She’d had her fingers pressed firmly onto his pulse, but it was evident that he was not alive from his milky complexion and the glassy eyes that looked like they belonged to the puppet. “He’s dead. He was dead when I found him. I would have saved him. I’m a nurse.”

“It’s okay ma’am.” Zuko comforted, crouching down to inspect Kuei and alleviate some of the pressure off the woman. There were two spots on the side of Kuei’s neck, the size of hole punches. They were dribbling some dark, slow moving liquid. The coppery smell. “Have you called an ambulance?”

“Smellerbee did!” Jet yelled, pushing his way to the front of the pack. His camera was dangled in front of Zuko’s eyes and then down at Kuei. 

“Stop it!” Zuko yelled, batting Jet’s hand away. “He’s dead, give him some respect!”

“I’m just getting evidence, dude.” Jet sighed. Zuko erupted.   
“You’re some dumb fucking youtubers, not the police! Stop filming a body for likes!” 

Jet planted a hand on Zuko’s chest and pushed him backwards. “We’re not just ‘youtubers’.”

“That’s what your issue is here?” Zuko snapped, pushing Jet back. “A man just died and you’re filming him!”

The lady was sobbing harder now, her hands shaking and red where she’d touched the holes on Kuei’s neck. “Stop it! Stop it!”

Zuko turned away from Jet for a second. “Sorry ma’am.” He sighed. When he was turned away Jet shoved into his shoulder, dangling the camera in front of the crying woman. Zuko scraped along the cold wet ground as Jet began to question her. 

“So did you know Kuei? What happened.” Jet hounded.

“Stop bothering her!” The fiery rage ignited in Zuko and he was about half a second from springing to his feet and punching Jet’s smarmy face halfway down the street when one of Jet’s gang sprinted towards them.

“The Police are here!” They yelled. Jet stiffened and turned on his heel and sprinted after them, camera gripped in his hand and likely still on. Zuko had half a mind to follow and reprimand him but he hesitated, instead crouching next to the lady and tentatively putting a hand on her shoulder. 

Bright fluorescent lights flooded the street, flanked by wailing alarms and a police car. It stopped a few feet in front of the three and a man, features obscured by the blinding lights of the car, stepped out. He took a look at the puppet, the corpse, the two bystanders, and then back at the puppet. 

“Someone call Zhao. We’ve got a corpse.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jet is Avatar is this Au's equivalent of both the Paul brothers stuffed in one strangely eyebrowed young adult. Do with that what you will.
> 
> (Thanks for reading!)


	4. All Cops Are Zhao

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko has a run in with the cops, Katara, and a boom box.

Zuko wrung his fingers together, staring at his shoes and not at the pack of cops that were bustling around the station. He’d always hated police stations - his father’s illegal activities and the nights he’d spent in them after ‘the accident’ leaving a sour taste in his mouth whenever he stepped inside. Therefore it was not ideal at all that he’d had to stay in the Tickerton Police station all night, perched next to the hysterical woman who had found the body. Zuko had tried his best to console her after the tragic events of the night before but she was not having it and spent most of her time sniffling down the phone at her boyfriend.

Then Zuko was left in worrying silence as the woman shuffled off to be questioned. The air felt like custard, hot and slow to move as he waited for… whatever. He tried his hardest to get his mind away from the irrational fear that they were going to blame him for the crime by debating what his strategy was for the interrogation - not that he had much to hide, but keeping things from his father and Azula had always taught him to be selective and strategic about what he said.

He’d learnt from Uncle’s diary that telling the Police about him was a no go for whatever reason and Zuko trusted his judgment more than anybody else's, but Zuko had never been the best liar and he’d told enough people (aka Toph and Sokka) about why he was in Tickerton, so he’d have to compromise on his motives. He could likely tell the story of how he found the body pretty much entirely honestly, that wasn’t super incriminating. Or it wouldn’t be if there wasn’t a recorded conversation of him making fun of the murder victim. But surely that wasn’t enough of a motive, right? That being said his dad had been more than motivated to be a dick by Zuko just existing. As for Jet and the Freedom Fighters, Zuko had no real qualms throwing them under the bus.

“Excuse me sir?” One of the Junior Officers was standing in the doorway. “Zhao is ready for you in questioning.”

“Oh, okay.” Zuko muttered, standing up and following him. “Do you have any idea when we’ll be done? My employee should be turning up for work this morning and I need to let her know the shop’s closed.”

“It shouldn’t be long. We’re just taking a witness statement.”

“Great.” Zuko remarked flatly before being led into a small dark room, with a single flickering light and a sizable, stable desk. On one side of it sat a flat faced man with creased skin and hair that went from a dry brown to a dark grey. He wore the typical blue uniform of every officer but he seemed to be more angular and dark in the shadowy room, imposing. His face betrayed no real sense of emotion. “Sit down, son. My name is chief detective Zhao. Let’s get this over with.”

Zuko pulled out a chair and it squeaked as it dragged across the floor. 

“Name?”

“Zuko.”

“You want to tell me what you were doing last night, Zuko?”

Zuko gulped. This felt a lot like a guilty until proven innocent line of questioning even though Zhao had not really said anything. “When?” He asked, which was probably not helping him in the slightest.

“Let’s go from four o’clock.”  
“Uh, so I was in my Uncle’s tea shop, looking over some paperwork. Just businessy things, taxes and orders and whatever. Then I heard a scream and I rushed out of the shop and saw Kuei on the floor with his puppet.”

Zhao pursed his lips and tilted his head. “Your Uncle’s tea shop, huh? So why were you looking at the forms, and can your Uncle give you an alibi?”

“My Uncle owns the tea shop but he does lots of travelling. He actually came here about two months ago to set up the shop but just left so I came to Tickerton to man the shop whilst he’s gone.” It was not strictly a lie, he’d come to Tickerton for his Uncle and he was manning the shop.

“That’s not great for you.” Zhao said.

“You can’t seriously think I had something to do with this?! They found his body in the middle of a public street at night, anyone could have killed him and gone back inside!” Zuko argued, a cold sweat breaking out at the back of his neck.

Zhao smiled. He had the grin of a shark. “We here in Tickerton are very… familiar with each other. We’re a close community, but then a mysterious stranger with a bad attitude turns up and begins to manage a tea shop that has been abandoned for weeks and suddenly a body turns up, a body of a person you’ve openly had a disagreement with. Are you telling me that’s not suspicious?”

“Surely whoever caused the disappearances should be under more suspicion, and that’s been going on longer than I’ve been here.”

Zhao’s eyes narrowed and he plummeted from confident, grinning predator to being caught off guard, if only for a split second. Then he straightened up again, but the self satisfied smugness was gone from his expression. “I don’t know what disappearances you’re talking about.” 

Zuko tilted his head to the side. “The ones that Jet and his Freedom Fighter lackeys are here to investigate? If you insist.” 

Zhao snarled. “I’d watch your tone young man. I don’t think a sensible young adult like yourself would perform such a horrendous act of violence and kill one of the town’s most loved, but I will warn you that evidence to say otherwise can and will be found if you step too much out of line.”

“Even though I’m innocent?”

Zhao leaned across the table slowly and brought his head opposite Zuko’s glaring into his eyes with all the scorn of Zuko’s own disappointed dad. Whoever this Zhao was, Zuko was suspecting that between his backhanded threats and aura of unimpressed power, Zhao and Ozai were cut from the same cloth. Zhao’s breath smelt like tobacco and expensive wine. “That all depends on your attitude.”

Zhao leant back and threw his hands in the air nonchalantly like he was telling a funny joke to his friend. “Get out of here kid.” 

Zuko stood up and went to evacuate the room, only hailed back by Zhao and his predator grin. “Oh, I forgot to tell you.”

Zuko tilted his head.

“Don’t leave town.”

\---

It was likely humanly impossible to escape the police station quicker than Zuko did after his conversation with Zhao. He hightailed into the outside world, made it about two steps, and jolted still. The mid morning sun was shooting down like a naked flame, hot and bright in comparison to the dull artificial yellow light of the police station and the suspicious darkness of the time he found the body. He adjusted and shuffled away in the direction of the tea shop, his neck aching through lack of sleep and the awkward sitting position he’d had to stay in for hours. The sun was alarming: he hadn’t realised that so much time had passed. Zhao had let him and the woman stew in the police station for far too long.

Even more frightening than the all encompassing passage of time was the angry blind teenager standing outside the door to the tea shop, arms folded. “The hell have you been?!” She yelled at him. “I turned up for my shift this morning and you weren’t there! And to make matters worse my parents were suddenly really ancy about letting me come? What the hell has been going on?”

“I was at the police station. I helped find a body last night.”

“... Oh.” And then, “What do you mean, helped?”

Zuko unlocked the door and told Toph everything over a mug of tea that neither of them touched until it was cold. And he really did tell her everything: the diary, Jet’s douchebagedness, Kuei’s corpse and Zhao’s thinly veiled threats. When the story was done Toph resched over the table they were sitting at and punched Zuko in the arm. “What was that for?!”

“It’s how I show affection.” She shrugged. “To be honest I’d thought you’d disappeared this morning. This is… Probably worse. Definitely worse. I thought the old man had just gone walkabout, not got himself in trouble.”

“Me too.” Agreed Zuko. “Look, I’m going to shower and go round Katara’s and see if she can tell me anything. Can you stay here and man the shop? It should be a slow day.”

“I want to come!” Toph argued.

“No, I need to keep up appearances.” Zuko admitted. “As long as the shop’s open Zhao shouldn’t get too suspicious. But Toph, now that things are getting serious and maybe deadly, for whatever reason, I understand if you want to resign and keep yourself safe.”

Toph cackled, lighting up like a toddler on a sugar high. “Dude, I’m having the time of my life! I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

\---

Zuko looked up from his freshly charged phone and the address Toph had texted him. From the outside the house looked pretty normal: sloped roof with red tiles, cream concrete walls and black guttering which lined the corners of the house. Sure, the garden was overgrown beyond belief and all the curtains appeared to be drawn but there was more to life than sunlight and daisies. When Zuko was a teenager he’d spent a lot of time moping inside with the curtains drawn.

Zuko weaved his way through the garden and arrived at the plastic front door. He knocked once, politely, and when nothing happened he banged a bit harder. “Hey!” He called. “Is anyone in? I need to ask some questions?” Nobody answered again so he finally banged his hand as hard as he could against the plastic. A woman’s voice raged from inside. 

“COME IN!”

Zuko froze, half in relief and half in fear and pushed open the door to the house. The inside was… strange. 

Despite it being the early afternoon all of the curtains in the house were pulled shut and the lights weren’t on so Zuko had to navigate himself around in the semi darkness. There was stuff everywhere; it looked like the house of a barmy collector. Memorabilia was littered around the floor, leant up on walls and stacked on shells. There was an old victorian iron on the wooden floor next to the door, and balanced on top of it was something that looked like a chunk of concrete from some desiccated wall which had red spray paint on it. On the ceiling was an 70s style disco ball that was rotting slowly, and decorating the wall was a traditional oil painting of a man who looked vaguely like Sokka in some old outlandish outfit that was likely from the late 1500s. There was an old gramophone put on a side table next to the sofa in the living room, which was placed upon the biggest, most obnoxious 80s jukebox Zuko had ever seen. 

It was the most eclectic, horrifying mess that Zuko had ever seen.

Uncle would have loved it. Zuko would have had a nightmare living here.

It was like taking a trip through his history book collection. Admittedly Zuko had no real idea on the era that most of the stuff came from but the art gave him some clues: he’d completed a joint honours art history and business degree in college, even though Iroh had tried to goad him into a philosophy degree. 

The most out of place thing in the open plan kitchen and lounge was a huge, dominating fridge that you could definitely fit at least two corpses in. Instead of having a scuffed, dusty quality like the rest of the objects it was clean and shiny, tall and expensive. It even had one of those fancy ice makers on the front that Zuko’s dad had once had (at least before he smashed it in a fit of rage for spilling water all over the kitchen floor which everybody had been too scared to fix).

A girl was perched at the kitchen island in front of it, boredly sipping from a mug. She was wearing a simple blue t-shirt and her hair was long and bushy, obviously unbrushed. Her eyes were half closed and when she saw Zuko’s obviously uncomfortable aura she huffed. “We have a doorbell, you know. And phones.”

“Sorry.” Zuko blushed. “We, er, I- I’m Zuko.”

“Nice to know. Can I help you?” She answered snippily.

“Is Katara around? I need to chat to her.”

The girl waved sarcastically. Her face was unimpressed. “Hi. I’m Katara.”

“I’m Zuko.”

“You said that.” Katara took a tired swig of her drink.

“Oh. Well I’m Iroh’s nephew, from the Jasmine Dragon. Toph said you used to work there.”

Katara’s eyes widened and she choked on the drink, spitting it into the ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ mug. “Oh, uh, wow. I thought the shop was shut so I stopped turning up. I can come back to work if you want?”

“It’s okay.” Zuko said. “That’s not what I’m here for. It’s just my Uncle… he hasn’t been heard from in a few weeks and I think you were the last person to see him? I’m just concerned he might be in a bit of financial trouble, he has a knack for buying things we don’t need.”

“Heh. You should meet my brother. He loves buying random shit. But nothing strange happened with your uncle. Suki and I closed up the shop and said bye to Iroh and when I turned up for my next shift he was gone.”

Katara’s story seemed to fit broadly with what Toph had said but there was one thing he didn’t quite get. “You said you and Suki closed up shop but in Uncle’s last diary entry it said he, Suki and a kid called Aang went with him to do something?”

The young adult seemed caught off guard by this and Zuko could see her thoughts ticking on behind her head. “They went to pick up a delivery that had accidentally been brought to the wrong place. That was the day before. Maybe your Uncle just forgot to write his next entry.”

“...Okay. Could you point me in Suki and Aang’s direction? I promise I’ll find the doorbell when I get to their house.”

The weak attempt at a joke either passed over Katara’s head or was flat out ignored. “Suki and Aang are on holiday.” Katara blurted. “They won’t be back for a while.”

Zuko breathed a sigh of disappointment and tried not to let it seem too obvious to Katara. “Thanks for your help, Katara.” He didn’t add that she’d been no real help.

“You’re welcome, whatever. Let yourself out, I need to go back to sleep.”

Feeling mildly affronted, Zuko headed back out of the lounge, distracted by all of the little items around the place. He was so distracted (and moving about with only one fully functioning eye in the dark was not much help) he didn’t see the massive boombox he’d noted on the way in and rammed his shin into the tough metal corner. He yelped, slipped on a pile of vintage golden age comics, and fell on the floor. He knocked the boombox with his knee on the way down and the most cringe inducing 80s hip hops began to blare throughout the room like an alarm.

Mortified, Zuko pushed himself up and tried to stop the boombox. He succeeded in making it louder, changing to fancy classical music, and finally switched it off. Katara had looked less than impressed throughout the whole interaction but now she was giggling, and made no attempt to help the fallen visitor. 

The humiliation did not decrease. In an even worse turn of events a man barreled out of a bedroom, completely shirtless, holding a boomerang like a sword. He was well muscled and his hair hung down in front of his face. Zuko almost didn’t recognise him. Almost.

“Katara what are you doing out there?! I’m TRYING to- Zuko?”

Zuko waved shyly. “Hey Sokka.” He tried his absolute hardest not to stare at Sokka’s chest and to quell the blush that was working its way onto his cheek. Luckily for him the darkness hid his wandering eyes and humiliation. 

“You know each other?” Katara asked, a smirk on her face.

“Zuko is my favourite barista.” Sokka smiled, his combative body language completely gone. “What are you doing here man?”

“I just needed to talk to Katara about my Uncle.”

“Oh okay. I need to go back to sleep but I'll see you round buddy.” Sokka said, winking.

Zuko tried his best to hide his blown out, shocked eyes and dry throat. From behind the kitchen island Katara laughed.

\---

Zuko arrived back at the tea shop in the late afternoon, Toph serving the few customers that were hanging around with surprising ease considering her typically blunt attitude. She might have a terrible taste in youtubers but she was a good kid. Zuko really was glad that he’d accidentally ended up as her friend.

Speaking of Toph’s terrible taste in youtubers. There was a large grey van parked on the curb about 20 meters from the front door of the shop. In the front seat lounged Jet, shoes on the console, typing on his laptop. There was a large camera placed in the passenger seat pointed directly at the door of the Jasmine Dragon. 

Jet looked up and saw Zuko. His eyes lit up and he grinned, saluting Zuko with two fingers and a ‘I’m cooler than you’ll ever be’ demeanour like they hadn’t nearly got into fistfight over the filming of a corpse.

Zuko held up his middle finger.


	5. Never look a gift box of Ember Island Tea in the mouth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko and Toph finally discover the mysterious 'cupboard'.

Zuko had been right: it had been a slow day. And the day after that. They were closed on Sundays, but on the Monday everything was slow as well. It was like someone had sent round a secret message saying ‘don’t go to the Jasmine Dragon: the scarred kid who works there is a creep’. On the one hand that was good - it meant that Zuko and Toph had to deal with about half the number of snobby customers but it also meant he had to spend more time fretting about his Uncle, Zhao’s suspicious questioning, Jet’s reason for lurking outside his shop, and whether Sokka thought he was an idiot. Admittedly the stakes for that last one were a bit less life or death but it was still an issue.

Zuko spent most of his free time rooting through his Uncle’s shop trying to find ‘the cupboard’ that Iroh had mentioned in his last diary entry. He’d checked every store cupboard in the shop including the cupboards for mugs in the main shop and the large store cupboard round the back. He’d studied Iroh’s office extensively, flicking through every book on tea for a clue, checking the safe for false backs, completely dismantling the futon to check for a trap door underneath and worrying Toph in the process. One night she sat him down with a mug of tea and sighed disapprovingly. “How have things been going?”

“Terribly.” Zuko huffed. “I’ve scoured every inch of this place searching for ‘the cupboard’ but everything is in complete and total order. I’ve been asking the building company for the floor plans but they’re not getting back to me and I’m at my wits end.”

“I think you’re going about this all wrong.” Toph suggested nonchalantly. 

“Sorry?!”

“Well… You’ve been looking for a logical way around this. Papers which have interesting stuff written on them, clues, floor plans to help you find this cupboard, trap doors. But your Uncle obviously half expected you to come here, the combination for the safe was something that meant stuff for both of you, he writes to you in the diary. I’m no detective but I’d say you should be looking for the personal things, things he’d know you’d specifically notice, as a failsafe. Either that or read the diary.”

“I’m not reading the diary!” He snapped. “That’s Uncle’s private writings!”

“I personally do not have an issue with going through someone else’s stuff. If I weren’t, you know, blind, I’d do it.” 

Zuko resisted the snarky urge to mutter ‘of course you would’ under his breath, but Toph was trying to do him a solid. He’d purposely avoided the diary not only because it was Uncle’s private thoughts and he’d hate someone going through it, and seeing his wise, infallible Uncle write about Zuko’s past and his father was too much to deal with. He was aware that Iroh was hiding something from him, but to look back and pour over the little details about what his Uncle had been hiding … that was just too much. “Look, I’ll think about it. It’s a last resort, though.”

“What about my other idea?”

“I might as well give it a go.” He shrugged and searched his brain for anything that fit Toph’s criteria of being ‘Zuko specific’ and just askew for him to notice. There were a couple of paintings that he’d done that were up in the main area but he’d searched behind them for the cupboard and found nothing. There was the mug Zuko had got him a few years ago that he took with him everywhere but it was filed away with all the other personal mugs and tea sets. The only other thing he could think of was the photo on Uncle’s desk. 

Little Zuko and his lion plush beamed at him, daring Zuko to take a closer look. Zuko thought back to how it had helped him discover the safe’s combination and something clicked.

The little metal peg which kept the frame attached to the backboard and kept everything together had been up. Zuko remembered thumbing it down when he first inspected the office and at the time it had seemed inconsequential. But the picture had been in there for years. So why would the peg be up? Obviously it could just be Iroh taking the photo out to look at it, but it also couldn’t be.

“You’ve just gone silent. The hell are you doing?”

“Thinking.” Zuko said, slowly getting up and walking to the desk. He grabbed the frame and flicked back the little metal pegs, sliding the pegboard back off and gently working the flimsy paper out of the frame. The photo itself was a bit faded from so many years of being exposed to light but it was still intact and mostly undamaged, saved for a few pencil scribblings on the back, saying the date and location of the photo. ‘Ember Island Pier’. A year after the ‘incident’. At first glance that would seem normal. There was indeed an Ember Island Pier fairground and they did visit a fairground on the date, but it wasn’t Ember Island Fairground. Zuko had adamantly refused not to go back, seeing as it was a regular haunt of his family and he was not prepared to deal with Azula’s gloating or his father’s cold disapproval. 

“Ember Island.” He murmured, pulling the photo closer to study the pencil marks closer. 

“Isn’t there a special brand of Ember Island tea?” Toph asked.

“It’s Roku tea that someone’s just slapped a name and some sugar on. Uncle says it’s a disgrace.”

“He still stocks it though. There’s a crate of it in the back room, I heard your Uncle talking to Suki about stocking it.”

“He would never.”

“He does.” 

The pair hurried off to the back room. Toph pointed out where the box would be and Zuko located it, buried behind several boxes of chamomile and jasmine. It was a medium wooden crate, shaped in a cube, with ‘Ember Island’ printed on the top in block red handwriting. The box was dusty and felt retro but it was by no means delicate. The lid was bolted shut by a latch and a padlock. It was also nailed to the floor, immovable. “What’s going on?” Toph wondered. “It sounds like you’re struggling to move a box.”

“Well you’re not wrong. There’s something funny with this box but it’s - grr -attached to the floor. Can’t shift it. And the lid’s padlocked.” Zuko heaved, yanking the padlock in an attempt to break it. The box must have been ‘the cupboard’ that Iroh had been talking about. Either that or Iroh secretly really loved his Ember Island Tea.

On a total whim Zuko pulled out the photo, and entered the date on the back. The lock clicked open, dropping onto the floor with a clatter that made Toph jump. Zuko timidly pulled the lid of the box back, peered inside, and frowned. The box was filled with tea bags, but as Zuko rooted through them instead of feeling the dusty wooden base of the box he felt something cool and tough, metallic. He pushed the little yellow tea bags to the side. “There’s a trap door.”

It was half concealed in shadows, the grey sheen of it blending in with the dark and the concrete floor of the storeroom. It had a small metal handle protruding from it that Zuko slid his fingers around and pulled as hard as he could. It took a couple of tugs but the trapdoor finally opened with the soft puff of an airtight seal releasing, revealing a ladder that led down into murky unknowns.

“I’m going to go down the trapdoor, Toph. Keep lookout.”

Toph swore. “Who the hell am I looking out for? And with what working eyes?”

“Right, sorry. Let me go down, and I’ll help.” He stepped over the sides of the box so his feet were touching the top few rungs of the ladder. He grabbed the top of the box, lowered his feet, then grabbed the top of the trap door and lowered himself down so he was fully on the ladder now, with only his head poking out of the top. He guided Toph inside in mostly the same way, helping her feel for everything and guiding her ankles slightly, before ducking to avoid a barefoot to the face. He wasn’t completely sure if the attempted kick was on purpose. 

The ladder was thankfully not that long, probably about eight foot. The pair dismounted in a pitch black room that honked like garlic and damp, with a hard presumably concrete floor. Zuko couldn’t even see his own hand in front of his face. When Toph jumped the last few steps off the ladder her heavy drop echoed. “Have you got your phone?”

“I left it upstairs, why?”

“I could really do with a torch.” Zuko sighed, sticking his hand to the left of the ladder to see if he could find a light switch. His hand met empty space, some objects that felt like smooth glass, and then something sharp. It sliced the palm of his hand right open and he bit down on his lip in pain, cursing. He reached out with his other hand and by sheer luck managed to click something against the wall and. The lights flickered on.

The room they were in was technically a cupboard, but that was by no means an overstatement. A fully loaded arsenal seemed a more apt word. 

The professional white lights shone down from the ceiling and illuminated the room. It was about six foot by six foot, and save from the section of wall that contained the light switch and the ladder, was completely covered in shelves, packed thickly with objects. Where Sokka and Katara’s house had stuff just littered around the shelves were organised in a compact, ordered fashion, similar objects banded together. There was a cluster of large white tubes that looked like the UV ones that he’d seen in nightclubs, an assortment of garlic products, medical supplies, various metal flasks and whisky bottles, and a whole side of the room dedicated to weaponry and armour. Swords, axes, shields, breastplates, daggers, was that a flame thrower? Zuko had sliced his hand open on one of the more ornate swords, his little drips of blood the same colour as the encrusted rubies on the hilt.

On another wall were a selection of crosses, wooden stakes and chains. 

“What is this place?” Toph wondered. “What can you see?”

“This whole place… I don’t know how to describe it. Apparently my Uncle was stocking up on swords, wooden stakes, crosses and garlic.”

“He does know vampires aren’t real right?” The blind girl murmured, reaching her hand out towards something sharp and metal. Zuko batted it away. “What do you think he was using this stuff for?”

Zuko hung his head and grabbed some bandages off the side and began to patch up his hand. “I don’t know what to think. As long as I’ve known my Uncle he’s tried to distance himself from violence. He owns a tea shop for god’s sake. But this, it reminds me of-” He groaned. “It reminds me of my dad. He owns a massive arms company that sells to militaries around the world. He had weapons all around the house. Azula and I were always terrified he was going to use them. I never expected my Uncle to have all of this. He’s not my dad.”

Toph shrugged, the complete antithesis to Zuko’s heightened emotions. She seemed more amused and curious. “He’s obviously gone a great distance to hide this from you. He’s not your dad, if your dad just left weapons hanging round the house. I mean it's concerning. Is this whole thing stashed with vampire killing stuff? Stakes, garlic-”

“Swords, UV lights, crosses, Holy Water? Yeah.”

“Your Uncle is fucking crazy, man. But that doesn’t mean he’s bad. Now give me one of those stakes, I wanna stab something.”

“No!”

\---

By the time Zuko and Toph emerged from ‘the cupboard’ (The arsenal? The maniac vampire hunting room? The deathtrap? Toph had been workshopping the name.) it was dark outside. Zuko had looked in every nook and cranny and at all the objects, and between some light teasing from Toph and the discovery that Iroh did not have masses of weapons in his cellar, his spirits were somewhat lifted, even if he had about a thousand more questions to accompany them.

Those questions disappeared when Sokka knocked on the door.

Zuko locked eyes with him from across the tea shop’s main area and scrambled for his keys, unlocking the door and holding it open so Sokka could come in from the cold. “Hey man, I know you’re closed and everything but I wanted to swing by and apologise for how my sister was when you came round the other day. And for the surprise boombox.”

Zuko flushed at the mention of the humiliation he’d faced at Sokka’s. “It’s alright, honestly. Do you fancy a drink?”

Sokka nodded. “Yeah, the same sugary monstrosity I had last time? And it’s not alright. You have to forgive her, my little sister’s never been the most kind to new people. Apparently she nearly started a fistfight with Toph on her first shift here.”

Zuko thought about the time when he’d brought round his childhood best friend, Mai, and Azula had located some of their mother’s hairspray and a lighter from the kitchen and blasted an apple off of Mai’s head. It was a miracle she ever came back. “Well knowing my own little sister, and Toph, that doesn’t shock me. It’s fine, honestly. I interrupted your sister when she was sleeping, I should have expected a bite.”

“Bite?” Sokka wondered. “Did she- wait. Yeah, emotional bite. Not literal. She would never bite anyone. How have you been?”

“Uh… Do you want the honest answer or the easy answer.” Zuko shrugged, squirting a fat glob of syrup into Sokka’s drink.

Sokka smiled from ear to ear. “Surprise me.”

“Well my Uncle is missing, he’s got a treasure trove in the basement, the police think I’m suspicious, there’s a youtuber watching my shop,”He muttered. ‘oh, and the hot guy who comes in for late night sugar highs probably thinks I’m an idiot’ he thought bitterly, thinking back to being splayed out on Katara’s carpet.

“There’s another hot guy that comes in for late night sugary drinks?” 

Zuko froze. His face burnt red. He hadn’t even realised he’d said that.

Sokka doubled over, laughing so hard he was red faced and snorting. “Wow, you are an idiot. But you’re a hot idiot.” 

Zuko scowled but the tense awkwardness had disappeared. Now he was half happy, half humiliated. He finished up Sokka’s drink and they congregated at the same table they’d sat when Sokka had last come in. He swirled his drink round, deep in thought. “How is the search for your uncle going?”

Zuko laughed dryly. “I think taking care of the shop and having to explain everything to Toph is stopping me from properly losing my mind. It feels like every time I take a step forward I’m still somehow going backwards, and there’s all these questions? Like today I discovered a secret room in the basement, and it’s full of weapons. My Uncle drinks tea and plays board games, but he’s got this fucking cellar full of vampire hunting equiptment. What the hell is he doing? Where is he?”

Zuko looked up from his drink, right into Sokka’s brilliant blue eyes. Sokka hadn’t been weirded out like Zuko had expected, he hadn’t recoiled in horror at Zuko’s fucked up family. Instead his face was drooping, the perfect features slanted. It was such a leap from his usual cheeriness into solemn, if not guilty sadness. “I’m so sorry. You don’t deserve to be dragged into Tickerton’s problems. If I could pack up, take Katara and leave tomorrow, I would.”

“So would I.” Zuko whispered. “But I’m worried for him. Scared shitless. I want to bury my head in the sand and get out of here, but then Uncle would be gone, and he’d never be coming back. When I was a kid I was such a dick to him, took him for granted, but he loved me anyway. I need to find him. I… I need to. I can’t lose him. Then I’d have no one who loved me left.”

“That’s not true.” Sokka snapped. He grabbed Zuko’s hand and pulled it close, encasing it both his hands like a heart in a cage. “I promise there are people out there who love you who aren’t your Uncle. You’ve known Toph and I for what? And she’s helping you find your Uncle, and so am I. I swear. And the S Man never breaks a promise to a pretty boy.” 

Zuko swallowed. “Did you just call yourself the S Man?”

“Yeah, like Super, but also Sokka.”

“You’re the worst.” Zuko murmured. “But thanks. That meant a lot. I just- I just miss him.”

“I know.” Sokka let go of Zuko’s hands and reached across the table so he was pulling him in a hug. They were so close, close enough that Zuko could sense Sokka’s head dangling just above his neck, even if he couldn’t feel the tickle of his breath that he’d expect to. The hug only lasted quickly and was in all honesty awkward and a tad uncomfortable considering the table in the way, but it had meant a lot. Zuko went to pull away, but his breath hitched and he paused. 

Sokka was looking at him like he was the entire world, the planet. His eyes could be hypnotic swirls and Zuko couldn’t care. He wouldn’t want to look away. He felt seen. He felt a bond. He would only have to move a few inches and he and Sokka would be lip locked. Connected. 

He saw Sokka glance down at his lips. His eyes seemed to darken, literally. He started moving in.

And then he pulled away. 

“Look, I need to tell you something. And I was told not to but your Uncle isn’t here right now, and neither is Katara, and you’re really upset and I can’t keep hiding this from you. Zuko-”

“Zuko!” The illusion was broken. Toph was standing in the doorway, her usually careless demeanour one of panic and shock. Zuko snapped to a standing position immediately, his older brother fight or flight responses filling him with adrenaline. “Sorry to interrupt your flirting or whatever, but there’s someone in the back room. I can hear them.”

“Shit. Stay here. I’ll go see what’s happening.” He began to move towards the door. Toph tugged on his arm and whispered. 

“The cupboard. Do you think someone knows?” 

Zuko glanced back at Sokka, who stood dead still, watching with scrutiny. 

“We didn’t know this morning. Just stay here. I’ll be alright.”

Toph nodded. Zuko took a deep breath and slowly edged down the hallway towards the store room. He pushed open the single, thin door that connected the store room to the shop. He closed it behind him. If there was someone dangerous in here he didn’t want them slipping out and going after Toph and Sokka. 

The store room was dark. The only source of light was the garage door that was up about a foot, letting in the small streetlight from outside. Zuko could only just make the dark shapes of the boxes. Some of them had been knocked off of shelves and left haphazardly on the floor, tea bags and leaves spilling out. Iroh would likely have an aneurism if he saw so much tea get ruined. 

“Look, I know you’re in here.” Zuko said to the silence. “I don’t want to call the cops unless I absolutely have to. Just come out of here and leave.”

Zuko thought he felt a twitch from the corner of the room and whipped round. He didn’t see anything.

“Jet, I swear to god if this is you. Turn off your fucking camera and get out of here.”

Nothing.

Zuko sighed, shot a quick look at the fake crate to check it was intact (it hadn’t been breached). Whoever had been in there probably broke in, looking for something of worth, found tea, heard Toph, gave up and slipped out. It was probably nothing.

He pressed a button on the wall and the garage door slowly wound down to the floor. The room was suddenly pitched black and Zuko bumped his way over to where he could see light bleeding in from underneath the door to the hallway. He reached it, put his hand on the handle, and hesitated. 

Something came out of nowhere and knocked him off his feet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zuko: Toph, what do you have?  
> Toph: A stake!  
> Zuko: No!


End file.
